HIGH SPEED CHASE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 58, 9 March 1944, Page 6

HIGH SPEED CHASE

, SOLDIER'S ESCAPADE The story of a high-speed) chase along the coast road from Paremata to beyond Paekakariki was told by Senior-Sergeant G. Paine in the Magistrate's Court today, when Thomas Pat-, rick Harland, soldier, 27, pleaded guilty to unlawful conversion of a New Zealand Government truck. . , Harland, the senior-sergeant said, was attached to the mechanical transport section of the Army. While under notice of transfer to Waiouru, he missed his train.at Wellington and became absent without leave. He packed up his Army clothing, leaving it at the railway station, and donned mufti. The truck had been left near the station with 30 gallons of petrol in it, and the defendant drove it away, heading north, i Just beyond Paremata he was travelling at 50 miles an hour and a traffic inspector set out in pursuit. Some distance further on the inspector got, ahead, but was almost rammed by the truck, which continued on at high speed. At Paekakariki the inspector left his car to ring up his assistant at Levin. Then the Provost Corps joined in and chased the truck as far as McKay's Crossing, where, in attempting to negotiate the right-hand turn, the defendant collided with the bridge. The truck was damaged to the extent of several hundred pounds, and the defendant was lucky to escape injury. He was taken into custody, the Paekakariki police having also joined in the chase, |md was brought back to Wellington.' He had been drinking earlier, in the day. "It is really one of the worst types of unlawful conversion that we have had," said the senior-sergeant. Harland, who had nothing to say, was sentenced to three months' imprisonment.